Tuesday, July 13, 2004

The Intifada in Roger & Me

I've discussed the absence of the question of Israel and Palestinians in Fahrenheit 9/11: "Michael Moore's Dilemma: Israel, Saudi Arabia, and John Kerry" (July 8, 2004). Here's a footnote.

What's interesting is that Moore managed to include an image of Palestinians in a film for which the question of the Israeli occupation is the least relevant among his feature-length works: Roger and Me. As the credits roll, Moore revisits the major interviewees in the film to poke fun at their cluelessness one more time. The third figure is Maxine Kronick, a Flint official who tried and failed to make downtown Flint "the entertainment center of the area" like Toronto (!) earlier in the film. Moore (off camera) asks Maxine: "Where are you going to?" Maxine happily replies: "I'm going to Tel Aviv." Moore asks again: "Why?" Maxine, beaming, jokes: "Well, maybe, someday I'll be the minister of tourism." Then, the film cuts to a scene of Palestinian youths throwing rocks at IDF soldiers, as the subtile reads "One month after Maxine arrived. . . ".